There is a strong motivation to deploy the contactless, very small-size, low-power and very low-cost sensors for the emotion detection in following application scenarios:                a) Detection of a human, being excited, without physical contact to the person;        b) Detection of a human, being calm, without physical contact to the person;        c) Detection of a mood or emotional status of a human, being defined as condition between being excited and being calm on the specific linear scale, without physical contact to the person;        d) Detection of an animal being excited without physical contact to the animal;        e) Detection of the animal being calm without physical contact to the animal;        f) Detection of a mood or emotional status of an animal, being defined as condition between being excited and being calm on the specific linear scale, without physical contact to the person;        g) Detection of a human mood changes, being defined as an emotional status change between being excited and being calm on the specific linear scale, without physical contact to the person;        h) Detection of the animal mood changes, being defined as an emotional status change between being excited and being calm on the specific linear scale, without physical contact to the animal;        
The related apparatus and method of operation should be able to initiate the related actions, depending on a detected emotional status or pre-defined event.
State-of-the-art emotion sensors are based on contactless and contact-based sensor acquisitions. The contactless emotion sensors are usually based on the optical video assessments of the object under observation, or on the combination of the different art of information, obtained by different art of sensors.
It was published in different scientific articles that microwave radar sensor, in the frequency range 3-30 GHz, may be used to detect the vital signs. Especially 2.4-, 3-10, 24- and 60-GHz vital sign demonstrators have been publicly reported.
The following patents and patent applications published in the last couple of years show the relevance of the topic and the state-of-the-art of the emotion sensors solutions.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,764,656, “Sensing device of emotion signal and method thereof” describes the sensing device of an emotion signal and a method thereof capable of recognizing and analyzing the change in emotion by collecting at least one of the bio signals and peripheral environmental signals. The approach considers PPG sensor, a GSR sensor, a temperature/humidity sensor, an acceleration sensor, a voice sensor, and an infrared sensor as means to get the emotional information.
US 20140112556, “Multi-modal sensor based emotion recognition and emotional interface” from Sony Corporation describes the system using one or more acoustic features, visual features, linguistic features, and physical features extracted from signals obtained by one or more sensors.
CN 203290919, “Novel pressure sensor set for implicit emotion interaction cushion”, describes comprises forty pairs of pressure sensors system assessing the movements of the body under observation.
WO 2014071062 “Wearable emotion detection and feedback system”, describes head mounted display and sensing apparatus cooperating with the display detect audible and visual behaviour of a subject. During interactions, the device, recognizes emotional states in subjects by comparing detected sensor input against a database of human/primate gestures/expressions, posture, and speech.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,190,314, “Computer input device with biosensors for sensing user emotions” by IBM, describes a method and system for correlating physiological attributes including heart rate, temperature, general somatic activity (GSA), and galvanic skin response (GSR) to N emotions of a user of a computer input device, such as a computer mouse.
US 20140171752, “Apparatus and method for controlling emotion of driver” describes an apparatus for controlling emotion of a driver includes an emotion sensor unit configured to collect a biomedical signal from the driver. The emotion sensor unit comprises an image recognition apparatus to recognize a face, a gesture and a state of a pupil of the driver, a voice recognition apparatus to recognize a voice of the driver, and a contact sensor.
WO 2005043453, “Robust and low cost optical system for sensing stress, emotion and deception in human subjects” by Northrop Grumman described a method and related apparatus for sensing selected emotions or physical conditions in a human subject. The technique employs a two dimensional camera to generate a facial image of a human subject.
CN 103583398, “Dog emotion-relieving collar” discloses a dog emotion-relieving collar comprising a control chip, a pulse meter, a sound sensor, a flash memory and a loudspeaker as a means of the animal emotion information extraction.
EP 2060228, “Medical device with an emotion measuring finger sheathing means incorporating with a long-distance control” describes contact based system with object using information about temperature.
This invention introduces apparatus and method operation for emotion sensor, based on mm-wave radar sensor, digital signal processing, high-gain planar antenna systems, which is inherently small size, inherently low cost and which allowed contactless detection of the emotional status of a human being or animal, from the distance up to several meters; typically 0.5 to 1 meter.